LA Times: CBS News Was Had

The latest from the Political Grapevine:

LA Times: CBS News Was Had

CBS News Sunday anchor and chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer (search) says he hopes his network does some more reporting to prove that the National Guard memos it obtained are real, insisting, "we have to find some way to show ... they are not forgeries."

What's more, Schieffer, host of "Face the Nation," says Dan Rather is, "absolutely convinced these documents are real," adding, "[it's] completely out of the question" that it's all a set up.

Newspaper editorials, meanwhile, are now weighing in on the controversy, with even the reliably liberal LA Times concluding, "CBS News was had," and the Arizona Republic calling it a, "journalism nightmare."

Guidelines Followed, But Not in CBS Docs

Speaking of the CBS documents, it turns out they do not follow guidelines mandated by the Air Force and consistently followed in other documents by President Bush's National Guard Commander, whose signature appears on CBS' documents.

Specifically, Air Force manuals say there should be no period after an officer's abbreviated rank, but there is one after the abbreviation for "lieutenant" in the CBS documents. And while one of the memos indicates that President Bush disobeyed orders to take a physical, a Vietnam War pilot tells the Washington Times he's never heard of such an order ... and that physicals are done on an officer's birthday.

The CBS memo purported to be an order to take a physical was dated May 1972 and set May 14 as a deadline, months before President Bush's birthday.

Million-Dollar Man

Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid has donated $1 million, nearly one third of his own available campaign funds, to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, marking the single largest contribution by a single senator to that committee in memory.

Reid insists he's not forgetting about his own re-election race, but "it [is] important to step up to the plate and help my friends in close races." New Jersey Democratic Senator Jon Corzine, the committee's chairman, calls Reid, "nothing short of a Rock Star."

Another Sticker-ey Situation

A woman in Moulton, Alabama, says she was fired last week from the Enviromate Insulation Factory for displaying a "Kerry-Edwards" sticker on her car.

Lynne Gobbell says she was told by her boss to remove the sticker, but she refused, insisting he, "couldn't tell me who to vote for." So, she tells the Decatur Daily, she was then fired.

She has spent much of the week waiting to hear if she's eligible for unemployment compensation, but no need for that now. John Kerry himself has since called her, and offered her a job with his campaign, though she says Kerry didn't offer many details about the job.

– FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report